Bizarre Video Uses Cavemen To Sum Up The Syrian War In 3 Minutes

Residents from a small rebel held town in Syria have enacted a
satirical pantomime that mocks the West's response to last
month's chemical weapons attack in Damascus.

As President Barack Obama pursues a diplomatic
track, demanding that the Syrian regime give up its chemical
stockpiles, residents from the northern town of Kafranbel have
posted online a sardonic sketch designed to remind the
international community that the war in Syria, which has so far
claimed more than 100,000 lives, will continue even without the
presence noxious gas.

The short video, titled 'The Syrian Revolution in three minutes',
that was published on YouTube last week and that
has since gone viral, depicts the evolution of the Syrian
uprising - from peaceful protests and bloody government
crackdowns 2011 to the current war - and the response of the US
and EU to its various phases.

The film opens with a group of young men and children dressed for
the Stone Age in brown rags, emerging from a cave and unfurling
rudimentary protest banners. Then a man with a Syrian flag taped
to his bare chest, representing the Syrian regime, guns down the
crowd. The protests continue and grow larger.

The Syrian attacker is joined by men bearing the Iranian and
Russian flags. All the while two men, one dressed in the American
stars and stripes, and the other bearing the logo of the EU,
watch from the sidelines. They chew on nuts and look on passively
as the attackers scale up from Kalashnikov, firing TNT bombs on
the protestors (all this is depicted in the style of a pantomime,
where the word "boom!" fills the screen as the TNT explodes).

It is only when the Syrian attacker uses a chemical barrel
against the demonstrators that America stands up from his rock,
grunting and waving his arms. Russia takes the barrel from Syria
and gives it to America who sits down again and continues to
watch as the attackers revert to using TNT.

The message at the end of the film reads: 'Death is death,
regardless of the way it is done. Assad has killed more than
150,000. Stop him'.

Raed Fares, a media activist in Kafranbel
and the mastermind behind the film told the Telegraph: "It was on
my mind, how bad the US reaction was to chemical weapons. They
don't care about the 150,000 people who have already died. They
just thought about the type of weapon that Assad used to kill the
last 1,400".

Mr Fares said he decided to use cavemen because "there was no
humanity in those ages" and that his "message is so clear [to the
international community] that it only requires simple tools".

Using stone-agers who have not yet harnessed the power of
language and can only grunt also means that the film can be
understood anywhere in the world.

Though Mr Fares says it was not intentional, the short film also
makes a mockery of the criticism of the opposition frequently
iterated by pro-government supporters, that "these people want to
take us back to the stone age" - referring to the presence of
hardline jihadists fighting the regime with the desire to impose
hardline Islamic law on Syria.

Whereas in many cities in rebel held Syria civilian activism and
public protests have been supplanted by armed factions, and in
some areas the hardline leadership of al-Qaeda, Kafranbel has
continued to hold regular peaceful demonstrations. From this
small village in northern Idlib province, half destroyed by near
constant shelling attacks and government airstrikes, Mr Fares and
other political activists have worked ceaselessly to affect
change at the highest echelons of international diplomacy,
inspiring support for the Syrian revolt.

The hundreds of banners, published on Kafranbel opposition
website, are always in English and are designed to reach out to
the West. They caricature of President Assad, President Obama and
other world leaders and reference western films, television
programs and books. One sketch depicts Mr Assad as Gollum from J
R R Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings'; another shows Mr Assad at the
helm of a war ship wearing a pink dress, being held by Russian
President Vladimir Putin, picking up on the romantic scene in the
film Titanic.